Rickey Never Asked to be Born

I used to hate myself for liking Rickey Henderson.

I moved to the city of St. Louis at four years old. I had never been to a professional baseball game… heck, all I understood about the sport was that my father had given me a bat and that I was not, under any circumstances, allowed to hit my little brother with it, which seemed to be pretty par for the course. My parents never let me hit him with anything. Even teddy bears.

After a few months in town, I fell in love with the game of baseball. The kind of serendipity one experiences when going from complete ignorance of a topic to total infatuation is rare. It happened to me when Suzy Tackett batted her eyelashes at me in kindergarten. It happened to me the first time I figured out I could read and that the city had seen fit to fill an entire building with free books for me and it happened to me after the first time I watched a baseball game on television.

And after I watched, I had to learn more about the game. My father, as much as he loved baseball, was about useless for most of the knowledge of my favorite team. Sure, he could tell me the rules, explain the positioning and lineups, and even show me the best ways to throw, catch and hit, but he had never been a Cardinal fan. He was as new to St. Louis as I was, and probably because he was trapped working and going to school and raising three kids, he didn’t have the time or inclination to research the history of the team.

But there were plenty of people in my neighborhood who could (and would). One of these people, an old white man who lived up the street and whose name I forget because I pretty much always called him Sir, taught me the history of the greatest Cardinal players ever. One of them was Lou Brock, who Sir promised me did things on the basepaths that would never be done again.

And then Rickey Henderson showed up and Rickey did some awesome stuff. Sir swore that Rickey hit better leadoff than Bobby Bonds, that he ran the basepaths as good as Lou Brock himself and that he could irk even the best pitchers from the moment he got into the batters box until the second he scored. Sir liked Rickey a lot, even if he was indeed, as Sir called him, “One crazy ass Negro.”

(Side note: It’s weird how really old people get a pass on racism but I guess that’s a topic for another day.)

Then Rickey broke Lou Brock’s stolen base record and, with Brock standing right there to help honor the young man who broke his record, the new record breaker said “Lou Brock was a great base stealer, but today, I am the greatest of all time.”

To the rest of the nation, it was at worst disrespectful and at best just Rickey being the oddball the rest of baseball had come to appreciate, but in St. Louis that statement was blasphemy. The consensus around town became that Rickey wouldn’t play for the Cardinals if he offered his services for free; talk radio and sports television airwaves lit up with spittle and venom all aimed at the A’s leadoff hitter. Rickey was viewed by most St. Louisans as more than just disrespectful: he was an outright atrocity of a man who should have been dragged out into the street and pelted with lit M-80s by Stan Musial. He was booed during every St. Louis at-bat (of which there were few because he primarily played in the American League) and more than once was referred to by my father as, “That son of a bitch Rickey Henderson.”

Sir was dead by the time Rickey had broken that record so I never got his thoughts on the matter. I just remember staying really quiet around my friends and refusing to admit to them that I would have loved Rickey in the Cardinal outfield.

Every media outlet on the planet lately has some reflection on Rickey Henderson’s career, both off the field and on the field. And all of that is fine and dandy like Ned Flanders’ favorite candy. Every baseball fan over the age of twenty has a Rickey memory. And I will remember Rickey Henderson primarily for teaching me that one wrong sentence can make a large group of people hate you.

But still, that’s hardly a reason to give a fuck.

And as he prepares to enter into the Hall of Fame, I kind of hate myself a little for hating myself for liking Rickey Henderson.

That’s why I’m recording his Hall of Fame induction speech and inviting all five of my friends and all six of my readers over for a beer-filled barbecue. I don’t expect them to come, mind you (who in the hell watches Hall of Fame speeches?). But I’m doing it anyway.

Because Rickey was one of the greatest.

And that speech is gonna be freaking hilarious.